Scanning form with OCR into MS Access...

[Symian]

Does anyone have any info or how to accomplish adding data from
invoices to MS access via scanning and OCR?

Thanks in adavnce.

[Mark Bedell]

There is no direct way to do this unless you know how to write an add on to
Access that will convert a scanned picture of text into words.

What you will need to do is probably what you are doing, and this to scan in
the text, (which is nothing more than a picture actually) and then hit it
with your OCR software to convert it to a text file. The quality of the
resultant text file will depend on the quality of the starting text paper.
If the paper is in poor shape, stray pen or pencil marks, copy from a pour
quality copier, text scewed at an angle, etc... The the final result will
require a lot of work. Once it's in a text file you can add it to your
Access DB by connecting to it. I would suggest cleaning it up using a text
editor that will leave it in a text file format when you save it.

Kilroy

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[Brendan Reynolds]

We did this once. The scanning and OCR software we used allowed us to define
an output format. We used CSV. It was then a simple matter to write an
import routine in Access that imported the CSV files and then archived them
(so they didn't get imported twice).

The forms we were dealing with were hand-written, and OCR software with
hand-writing recognition is (or at least was, about two years ago) very
expensive and not very accurate. Life will probably be a lot easier if
you're dealing with printed or at least typed forms.

I've deliberately avoided mentioning the particular software that we used,
as on the one hand I could not recommend it, and on the other it would be
unfair for me to condemn it, given that I haven't looked at it for about two
years - it may have improved significantly since then.

--
Brendan Reynolds
bren...@indigo.ie
http://www11.ewebcity.com/brenreyn

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[Brad Dennis]

This would be doable if you purchased the Kodak Imaging Professional through
eastmansoftware.com It comes with the ocr controls. It costs about $90 and
is well worth the money. I'm just finishing an application that allows the
user to scan paper documents associated with Access records.

Brad Dennis

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